People will always want their paper. They want to do the crossword in the dunny. They want to take it to the beach. They want to dribble their meusli or bacon and eggs on at breakfast. No-one will want to read the daily news on the screen.
I am always regaled with this argument when I talk about electronic publishing. And I always agree with it. I, too prefer to read things on paper than on the screen. And I have a very large screen with 14-point Times Roman type on it.
But personal preference … even the personal preference of the majority … does not always determine what will happen. That is only the demand side of economics. There is also a supply side.
The printed newspaper is already being eroded, and I imagine that in the next decade or two it will virtually disappear. This is because electronic delivery of news and, more importantly, advertisements over the phone line and on to computer screens at home and in the office is becoming cheaper, faster, better and more widespread all the time, while delivery of the printed version is becoming ever more expensive.
In an ideal world the paper version would continue, because it is such a convenient way of giving people a cross-section of the events in the city, nation and world coupled with a range of opinion, entertainment and advertisements for goods and services. And in that ideal world the text would be stored electronically because that is a far easier way to search archive material.
But the paper version will only continue, if it is economic. To date, the editorial matter has been hugely subsidised by advertising revenue. The cover price accounts for about 30 per cent of the cost. To date, advertisers have found newspapers an attractive vehicle for getting their message in to people’s homes. If the advertisements are effective, advertisers are happy to pay.
As more people buy computers with modems that link in to the Internet, they create a new vehicle for advertisements, especially classified advertisements. Traditional newspapers will be forced to join them. They will want to take advantage of their advertisement-gathering infrastructure.
The new vehicle is very good for advertising because it enables the reader to do his or her own classifying. The user can search, for example, by price, geographic area, model type or a combination. It also enables the advertiser to display any amount of material. After the initial hits come up, the user clicks on the interesting ones for more information.
The drift of advertising to the electronic form will mean a slow drying up of the subsidy for the paper version. Then the question becomes: will people be prepared to pay $4 a day for their daily paper, or 4 per cent of their average wage? Maybe not, especially if there is a much cheaper electronic version available.
The economics are changing. For example, most of the homes of subscribers of The Canberra Times could have been equipped with a computer and modem for the price of the new press and a couple of years cost of newsprint … presuming a hefty discount for bulk buying.
The cost printing, delivering paper and recycling it are going up and electronic delivery is going down. And paper delivery imposes several hours delay.
It is true that computers and modems are notoriously difficult beasts. But so were the first cars and telephones. The cars lost their crank handles, spark retarders and unreliability and everyone could drive them.
The horse was faster than the car; the telegram faster than the fax and more reliable than the phone; and news footage in the cinema would always be there.
When I look around The Canberra Times editorial office today, beyond the commitment to an excellent editorial coverage, I see a huge, and frustrating, inefficiency. Only a tad more than half of our journalists are gathering and writing the news. The rest are chopping and squeezing and editing the material to fit into spaces between advertisements. In that process, there is a good deal of improvement. Grammatical errors, poor expression and waffle are eliminated. This improves communication. However, the primary constraint is space. Often pertinent parts of the message are destroyed in the necessarily fast process of squeezing an article into a space before deadline. Often things are rewritten or cut in a way that makes them ambiguous, wrong or unbalanced. News and opinion is not like margarine, where is some flows out of the tub, what is left is still good quality margarine.
In paper publishing a huge amount of resource is consumed in fitting things in. In electronic publishing editors are freed to concern themselves only with clarity of communication. The onus is thrown back to the writer to retain his or her audience and to be accurate and fair.
A further benefit of electronic publishing will be reader vetting. At present a writer gets a run if the news or features editor think the material is good. A columnist is kept on if the editor thinks he or she is good. But out in readerland the columnist might be a waste of space. With electronic publishing the number of hits and the length of time of the hits are automatically calculated. The hunch that Shanahan writes a good wine column is confirmed or denied. The feeling that Macklin is a menace and should be manacled is either vetoed or validated. By the readers, not the whim of the editor.
What has happened with electronic publishing to date? In Australia, News Ltd has put all of its classified advertisements on line. For the price of a local call and the Internet provider’s charge you can search the classified database of a dozen newspapers. What has been the result? It indicates that the classified market is essentially one of individual cities. Cars, real estate, white goods and services are bought and sold in one city. Specialist, small, expensive items, like jewellery and photographic goods may have a national market place. Even so people like to see and touch before buying. The benefit of the national market is to gauge price before buying locally. But that does not help the advertiser much.
It means the electronic market will not destroy the advertising base of local papers; they will be published in a different way.
With news, however, content will change. Those newspapers without foreign correspondents will link to outside services, as they do now, but they are likely not to edit them in anyway, unlike the present paper versions where articles have to be selected and the text has to be made to fit between the advertisements on the pages reserved for foreign news. Those editing resources will be freed to local and national news.
In the US, some newspapers, such as The Washington Post, are putting their whole paper version and more on the Internet free. Others like the New York Times give you a teaser and demand a subscription fee via credit card if you want more. The Sydney Morning Herald puts some of its material on the Internet free.
In recent times, The Canberra Times has put most of its innovative effort into a new press, but is now investigating what to do. Watch this space and cyberspace for developments.
It is hard to say which electronic method (free or subscription) will prevail. As electronic transfer of small amounts of money gets easier, it may be the subscription method will win out. However, subscription (or cover price) has played second fiddle to advertising revenue in paper versions to date. It may be that the Internet site that contains excellent free-access editorial matter attracts high-paying advertising as now, and subscription fees are reserved for those who want to search the archive of past issues, after all, they are the people who want specific information and will be prepared to pay for it.
It may be that as modem and phone lines improve, the newspaper on the Internet will also provide voice and video clips in addition to words, pictures and interactive messaging to the “”Letters” page or with individual writers.
It certainly seems that Kerry Packer has woken up to this. Several years ago he doubted the future of newspapers. He thought that pay TV delivered through fibre optics would have cheaper telephonic services upon which would piggy back interactive services, including text and searching databases. This would cut out existing newspaper companies. However, modem technology has improved so much recently that it is apparent newspaper text and pictures (and soon reasonable speed video and sound) will be able to be delivered over the ordinary phone lines. Moreover existing newspaper companies have the news- and advertising-gathering infrastructure. It is probably this, as much as pure ego and a change in the political climate, that has got Packer interested again in taking over Fairfax.
The Internet has had some bad press recently (pardon the anachronism). Several newspapers got panned by a well-known television media commentator for repeating as true a silly story from the Internet about an American (where else?) who strapped a jet engine to his Chevrolet.
It serves the purpose, though, of showing the importance of the medium and the message. There are now millions of sites on the Internet displaying everything from advertising puffery to government propaganda and dry departmental information. In this environment, editorial integrity and independence will become more imperative than ever if audiences, and the revenue that comes with them, are to be secured. The importance of the stamp of the masthead will remain.
Anyone can publish on the Internet. To that extent it is very democratic. But people will still seek accuracy and quality. That is why, with continued commitment, the future of The Canberra Times is secure whether it is paper, electronic or both.